14 DAY TRIAL // The release of F.E.A.R. 2 was partially obscured by the launch of Killzone 2. The two games are very different beasts but the general label of first person shooter has been applied to both, leaving F.E.A.R. 2, which is more of a cross over between shooter and horror, at a disadvantage. The fact that the game felt somewhat easy and short has not helped things.
The developers at Monolith Entertainment have recently announced that they plan to remedy at least one of the problems that plagued the initial release. The post reads, “We are currently working on a patch for the PC version of F.E.A.R.2 that we hope to release in the coming weeks. In this patch we are modifying game difficulty to make the 'hard' setting more challenging, adding the option to toggle film grain and head bob, and several other small fixes. There are a couple other items we are also exploring which might make it into this patch, but we need to do research to evaluate the time and resources that it will take to add these changes to the patch.”
Here at Softpedia, we finished F.E.A.R. 2 in about 15 hours, playing on the hardest difficulty setting. It wasn't much of a challenge, especially with the liberal application of the time bullet mechanics that the game introduced rather early. So, bumping up difficulty could be a huge improvement, allowing players to get a second run through the game while facing a tougher challenge.
Monolith could also attract more players to F.E.A.R. 2 by releasing a bit of extra content for the single player experience. There were some pretty nice levels, especially the Schoolhouse and Hospital ones, but the game desperately needed more open spaces where the player could use different tactics in taking out the enemies.